"Very high quality" setting allows for much clearer in-home game streaming.

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Update (Aug. 18): Microsoft has announced through Major Nelson's blog that the previously hidden "very high quality" 1080p streaming feature will officially launch through an Xbox app update rolling out today. Our own tests found the new setting greatly improves the streaming experience, provided you have an in-home Internet setup that can handle it. The app update also includes some interface improvements that make it easier to interact with friends and add outside games to the app.

Original story (Aug. 13)

Further Reading

In reviewing Windows 10's new "Streaming from Xbox 10" feature, Ars' Sam Machkovech complained that "streamed Xbox One games look significantly worse through Windows 10, even at the highest-quality setting." Apparently, though, Sam wasn't actually testing the "highest quality" setting available in the streaming app. That's because there's a newly uncovered "very high quality" option that can be unlocked by tinkering with some of the Xbox app's configuration files.

Reddit user OomaThurman has publicized the method for unlocking this hidden quality setting, which involves editing the "userconsoledata" file in your Xbox app folder. You can activate the new higher-quality setting by setting the "IsInternalPreview" flag from "false" to "true," a naming convention that strongly suggests this feature is part of an early test that will be formally rolled out to all Windows 10 users in the future.

We'll be trying out this hidden feature for ourselves soon, but the folks at Digital Foundry already found a marked jump in quality when using the "very high" setting, saying it "appears to transmit full 1080p imagery." Comparison shots published by Digital Foundry show a noticeable increase in sharpness of details like faces, hair, and edges, which are much closer to the "source" image with the new setting.

The only downside to running in "very high quality" is a significant increase in the bandwidth required; your in-home network better be ready to transfer 18mbps if you want to take advantage of the best quality, according to Digital Foundry. While wired connections can handle that just fine, you'll probably need a pretty sturdy Wi-Fi setup to maintain that kind of throughput consistently. Even if your setup isn't up to "very high" streaming right now, though, it's still nice to see Microsoft is apparently future-proofing the Xbox streaming feature for high-end in-home networking.

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Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl